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Cleaning can be such a drag – but you can put some new meaning in your cleaning when you “go green” – helping your family and the planet’s health.
Page Remick, Eco-preneur and lead reviewer for PureZing offers you some helpful tips to get started.
Furniture Polishing
What's so bad about this?
Check the label on your tried-n-true polish. If it says “avoid breathing the vapors”, it’s likely to have petroleum distillates and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), proven to be harmful to your family’s lungs.
The Cleaner Green Way:
Our clean and green recipe makes furniture shine while you have fewer worries about your child getting hold of it. Adapted from Annie Berthold-Bond’s book, Clean and Green, all you need is
1 ½ T. olive oil
¼ c vinegar or lemon juice
1-2 drops of your favorite essential oil and a soft cotton rag.
Simply mix the ingredients in a bowl. Dab a soft rag into the solution and dust, polish and shine your wooden furniture with it. Best yet- you can reuse this rag over again so you’re creating fewer disposables (less landfill!) with each cleaning.
Moth Removal
It’s ever so easy to bring out mom’s old moth ball and moth crystals to make this chore easier. But check your high school chemistry book.
What’s so bad about this?
Those moth balls contain toxic naphthalene and moth crystals use paradichlorobenzene (PDB) which is even more toxic.
The Cleaner Green Way:
All you really need is cedar chips nestled in a cheese cloth square. (The cedar should be ‘aromatic cedar”. Also referred to as juniper in some areas.) You can get cedar chips at many craft supply stores, or make your own using a plane and block of cedar from the lumberyard.
Fabric Softeners
Okay – so this is more a weekly ritual than part of spring cleaning. But since we’re on the topic of cleaning…
What’s so bad about this?
People are discovering that fabric softeners are some of the most toxic products made for daily household use. They contain chemicals (like chloroform, benzyl acetate and pentane) that are known to cause cancer and/or damage to lungs, brain, and nerves. These chemicals are even more dangerous when heated in clothes dryers.
The Cleaner Green Way: Gather ingredients out of your kitchen:
2 c. baking soda
2 c. herbal or white vinegar
4 c. water.
Then simply add 4-6 drops of your favorite essential oil fragrance.
Mix together when doing a batch of laundry. You’ll need ¼ c added to the final rinse cycle of each laundry to get soft, aromatic clothes. And you wont’ be releasing toxic fumes into the neighborhood air where everyone for blocks around s forced to breathe them in.
Bathroom Cleaning
So many of us see all that soap scum, dirt, hairs and skin flakes and really want to chemical-blast away at it!
What’s so bad about it?
The problem is that many of the off-the-shelf products contain sulfates, detergents, surfactants. These are irritating to the skin and ultimately re-enter our planet’s water sources. You should know that the only way some of these products get approved for human use is via animal testing.
The Cleaner Green Way:
Want a 100% natural and cruelty-free way? Ingredients needed include:
1 cup of baking soda, Borax or Washing Soda
1 cup of Castile soap (such as Dr. Bronner’s Pure Castille Soap-Peppermint)
Mix these together in a plastic lidded container. Dip a sponge or cloth in and use as a soft scrub for your tub, tile and toilet.
Brush and Comb Cleaning
In the past, your mother just whipped out one of the ammonia-based household cleaners and soaked our brushes to get clean.
What’s so bad about this?
Ammonia gas is accepted as toxic and certainly seems to warn the body by irritating our noses, throats and eyes.
The Cleaner Green Way:
Put some warm water in a sink. Add some baking soda and swirl to dissolve. Put all dirty combs and brushes in to soak. You’ll see the dirt and oils will lift out. If there is spray or gel build up, simply run combs back and forth across the brushes while submerged and vice-versa.
Outdoor Watering
How often do you pick up the outside hose to clean the car, wash your pet, fill a spa or pond, maybe even water an organic garden?
What wrong with this?
Many outdoor faucets are linked to sources of water where lawn chemicals and pesticides and herbicides leach into it. Too many outdoor water sources are filled with chlorine, lead, arsenic, mercury, DDT, fluoride, dissolved metals, harsh minerals, hydrogen sulfide (the rotten egg smell) and volatile organic contaminants.
The Cleaner Green Way:
You can keep your outdoors healthy and cleaner too luckily. Products like Pacific Sands All purpose Hose Filter ($39.00) filter out these contaminants. Your dog gets a shinier coat, your garden vegetables and fruits remain uncontaminated and your car rinsed with this filtered water dries spotlessly.
“3 Mouse Click” Way to Clean our shared planetary household
Can’t afford a Hybrid? Solar panels on your house outside your budget? You, your family, your car – all have a “carbon footprint”, the total carbon dioxide emissions we create when we drive or use electricity.
What wrong with this?
These emissions contribute to Global Warming that is not only threatening many of the species on the planet but is changing the coastlines and earth’s weather patterns.
The Cleaner Green Way:
One of the simplest ways to help is to go to TerraPass.com and purchase a TerraPass for your car or home. The Terrapass calculator computes how much carbon emissions your car and home produce. Your “Terrapass” is a purchase, equal to the value of these emissions, which is used to fund innovative energy projects, helping us all move faster to clean, renewable energy. (By the way, Terrapass even lets you turn in your old cell phones and PDAs for recycling, converting those into Terrapass credits for you.
Want to learn more?
Here are a few books which can arm you with more ways to green your Spring Cleaning!
